


History of Three

by calillum



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Depression, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Bellamy, Rebuilding, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:26:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3534539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calillum/pseuds/calillum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of the mountain, Clarke came back to the Camp while the rest of the Arkers took to inhabit its warm halls.  Alone except for a few stragglers and Bellamy, Clarke tries to cope with her own guilt until the past catches up with her.  With an unrelenting Lexa and a loyal Bellamy, Clarke isn't sure that she can find forgiveness for her actions let alone happiness, but the three of them will try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	History of Three

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first venture into the realm of The 100 fanfic, but I just couldn't help myself. These three are so perfect. I began writing this before this week's season finale, so there will be divergence from the 02x13. Maya's alive, other people died, you'll see. Also, this is slow build, so hang in there for the B/C/L goodness. Now without further ado...

Clarke isn’t sure how long she’d been sitting there, at the gates to Camp Jaha. Things are quiet as there were only a few people from the Ark still left at the camp. The winter weather was taking a toll on the people used to the climate controlled space station and most chose to spend their time at Mount Weather to escape the frost. For Clarke, even the promise of a warm bed isn’t enough to make her call the mountain her home. Not after all that had happened there. Besides, she has important things to do still.

Like wait.

And wait.

Bellamy was supposed to have returned to Camp Jaha early in the day but now it was edging on dusk and Clarke was letting the endless scenarios in her head take route. Reaper attacks, a riot from the last of the guards at Mount Weather, a Grounder retaliation- all of these terrors flit through Clarke’s mind and they all ended up with bloodied, lifeless eyes staring back at her. Bellamy’s eyes.

Clarke’s breath catches in her throat and she can feel her pulse quicken as she tried to banish these thoughts. Bellamy had somehow become ubiquitous in her mind- even her most private thoughts were edged with his presence. When he was still their spy in the mountain during the war, she had justified it as worry for both him and the other 47. During the battle, she shrugged it off to how she worried for all of her warriors. When he insisted on confronting the Grounders for a new alliance, even though they abandoned him- them!- at the doors, she told herself it was because the sustenance depended upon it. Clarke is good at making excuse for her constant thinking of him. Then there was-

She’s cold, Clarke realizes, jarring herself out of her thoughts. Without the warm afternoon rays, she can see the reason people were seeking shelter in the mountain. She knows there is a place waiting for her- her mother likes to remind Clarke of that the few times they have been together since Clarke decided to return to the camp. But things are easier here for Clarke. At Camp Jaha she is away from everything- all the pain and bloodshed, all the lives that had to be put back together, the decisions she had made in times of war.

And Her.

Clarke tenses. Even as she sits in the quiet, cool air of the night within the safety of the camp, she can’t help the rage she felt towards Her. She can’t even think the name, even though it has imprinted itself in her mind almost as pervasively as Bellamy. Despite the fact that she can’t think directly of Her, she can still think of all the words that she deserved if they ever spoke again. Cold hearted, coward, liar, betrayer.

Before Clarke can let herself spiral into her growing hate, a rustling of branches near the woods catches her attention. Jumping from her post, Clarke almost stumbles as her legs are weak from their lack of use for hours. Nevertheless, she still finds the strength to run towards a familiar mop of brown curls as they breach the woods.

“Bellamy!” Clarke shouts as she gets closer. Bellamy, who had been talking to Miller, turns towards her with a smirk on his face.

“Such a welcome party, Princess.” Miller shifts uncomfortably beside him, avoiding looking at the blonde. Clarke doesn’t give it much thought as Bellamy places a strong hand on her shoulder that forces her to turn around, back towards camp.

“You were supposed to be here hours ago. Was is the council meeting?”

“Let’s just get inside, Princess, and I’ll fill you all in.” His guiding hand is forceful now and his long stride makes her practically skip to keep up.

“Is something wrong? Is it the Grounders?”

“Nothing’s wrong, just come inside and-”

His hand is too forceful, and Clarke’s senses are screaming at her. She stops suddenly, meters from the gate, and digs her heels in as Bellamy comes back to try and lead her back into Camp Jaha. Clarke looks from him to the guard party that is trailing behind them quite a few paces, slowing as they near, none meeting Clarke’s eyes.

“Bellamy, what’s going on? Are we in trouble? Did the Grounders break off the alliance talks?”

“Clarke, please, just come with me. We can go inside and talk.”

“No, Bellamy, I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on!” Clarke demands, voice raising. Bellamy shoots a look over her shoulder and Clarke has to use all of her self-control not to turn to see what he was looking at. Sighing, he runs a hand through his hair before closing the distance between him and Clarke. Grabbing her by the upper arms, there are only a few inches between the two of them and Clarke feels her pulse quicken again. Beating back treacherous thoughts, Clarke holds her glare at Bellamy.

“Clarke, I need you to trust me. I don’t want to do this out here. There are things you need to hear and understand, and it all explains why I’m so late, but you need to trust me and just come with me.” His breath ghosts across her face and Clarke feels guilt rise in her stomach, memories stirring from what happened after the mountain fell despite her best efforts to bury them over the past two weeks.

And then comes the shaking and cold. Bellamy must have been able to feel her tremors as his grip tightens and he turns them slowly so that his back was to the group of guards just feet from them. Clarke’s breaths come shorter and faster and she is barely aware the Bellamy is even there anymore. She isn’t seeing his face but a sea of faces that were now only ghosts.

“Clarke,” this time Bellamy’s voice is softer. He begins to back her up slowly and she obeys. “Let’s go inside,” he suggests again, and this time Clarke doesn’t fight him but lets herself be led. She is drowning in her own mind, so removed from the world around her that she doesn’t realize their group had doubled in the few moments she had shared with Bellamy. Waves are crashing over her, the tide pulling her deeper. She can’t breathe, she thinks. Her lungs are too filled with salty water, filling her, weighing her down.

“You should listen to him, Clarke of the Sky People. There is no time for weakness.”

And then she broke the surface. The water in her lungs turn to fire and Clarke is suddenly all too aware of what is going on. She spins on her heels, shaking off Bellamy’s hand in the process. icy eyes lock onto familiar kohl lined ones.

“The only weakness I ever had was trusting you,” Clarke hisses, crossing the distance between her and the Commander in seconds. “How dare you come here? After you condemned my people to die? Their blood is on your hands!”

“My hands are clean, Clarke of the Sky People,” Lexa says impassively, letting Clarke’s full title hang heavy in the air. “I am here on your Chancellor’s request, to accompany the Councilor to our home as part of the treaty.”

“Wha-?”

“Clarke, come on, let’s just go inside,” Bellamy insists, getting in between Clarke and Lexa. Clarke, who had yet to take her eyes off of her former ally, turns an accusing glare to Bellamy.

“You knew about this? You’re allowing her here? After all she did at Mount Weather!” Clarke nearly screams. Bellamy shoots a guilty look over at the Commander before looking back at the guards.

“Miller, show them where they can rest tonight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No!” Clarke protests, grabbing Lexa’s shoulder. “They’re not welcomed here. The families of people who died because of her are still inside.” Lexa merely looks down at Clarke’s hand before jerking away with a snarl to follow the guards inside the gates. Clarke goes to protest further but Bellamy holds her back.

“Clarke, just stop,” he mutters into her hair. Clarke is beyond the point of reason, throwing an elbow to his gut and pulling at his arms. His grip holds despite her efforts. Lexa doesn’t even look behind her when she says-

“I told you once, Clarke, that love is weakness. Your heart is what killed your friends.”  
Clarke slumps in Bellamy’s arms as the young leader is flanked by a few Grounders into the sanctuary of Camp Jaha. The quiet that Clarke had reveled in since she left Mount Weather twelve days ago is suddenly shattered by the chanting of Trigedasleng.

“Are you ready to go inside, Princess?” Bellamy asks quietly. Clarke doesn’t respond as she removes herself from his arms and marches through the gates to the old Mecha station. The Grounders are setting up tents and Clarke wants to be inside as quickly as possible in order to pretend that the intruders do not exist.

Her world had been simple while she was living at Camp Jaha. Fewer and fewer people remained and she would get news from Bellamy every few days between his trips to the mountain to work with the council. No one else bothered her and it left her with the large task of reconciling her time on the ground. Now even that was being taken away. Barely inside the door, Bellamy paused to look around at what Clarke had come to make her home.

There were a few pieces of clothes on the floor, a couple of vials stacked neatly on a half-attached shelf, and a mess of blankets and furs tangled around a single pillow. It was the bare minimum and compared to his room- his own personal room!- at the mountain, Bellamy felt a familiar regret for siding with Clarke when she said she wanted to move here in the first place.

“Are you warm enough in here?” Clarke ignored this question, opting to pacing from wall to wall, biting her nails instead. Bellamy took the chance to look at her for the first time since he arrived. Her hair was a mess, half of it having come out of the pins that held it in place, her coat was muddied and her face pale. She looked as if she hadn’t washed or slept in days- a far cry from the Clarke who used to challenge him at the drop ship. He began to reach out to her, but she merely sidestepped him and continued pacing a few feet further away. Bellamy sighs, nudging an upturned bucket with his foot before deciding it was stable enough to sit on. He watches her pace for another few minutes before trying to talk to her again.

“Sorry the meeting went long. Didn’t realize you’d be freezing your ass off in this cold waiting for us to get back. The alliance was formally written up and finalized today. I thought we’d have another few days of Jaha’s warnings and Indra’s scowls to go before this happened, otherwise I wouldn’t have said I’d be back tonight. Your mother was actually going to come, but the people who we saved from Mount Weather still need her there for a few more days of observation to make sure they’re adapting okay. I think she’ll be here before I leave.”

Bellamy cuts himself off short, feeling distinctly as if all his words were evaporating into thin air, if he was even saying them at all. Clarke was still pacing, eyes not leaving the floor as she worried away at her thumbnail. Bellamy shifts in his seat, glancing at the door when he hear a raucous laugh, before trying again.

“Clarke-“

“You knew?” Clarke practically whispers. If Bellamy wasn’t so attuned to her voice, he swears he would have missed it.

“What?”

“You knew she was coming here? I mean, that doesn’t even need a response! You brought her here! Invited her onto my doorstep! How could you Bellamy? How- how- after everything! You knew and you did this!” Clarke is screaming now, no longer pacing, but half turned towards Bellamy, breathing coming fast once more. Bellamy isn’t sure if he let her fume or get up and comfort her. Everything is telling him that he wants to do the latter but there is something about the way that Clarke looks that keeps him seated. She is as if she is straddling some precipice and the smallest movement could send her toppling over to the other side.

“I didn’t have a choice. The Council-“

“The Council? The Council?! Aren’t you on the Council now? Isn’t that why you go back up there all the time, to talk to the Council? You joined them to help us, all of us! Not hand us over to the enemy like meat on a platter!”

“I am helping us!”

“By inviting a murderer into our camp? You know what she did! She betrayed us all, you aren’t helping anyone by befriending her, you are killing all of us!”

“She wants peace as much as we-“

“Peace? She had her chance at peace! She decided to trade that for her own people and doom ours to death. If she hadn’t-“ Clarke hiccoughs, breaths coming in gasps now. She is underwater again, and her buoy is floating away from her. She continues, softer because her breath is too short. “We need to attack. Attack them first, before they can get to us.”

“No one is attacking anyone.”

“They already have!”

“No they haven’t!” Bellamy roars, springing up from his seat. The bucket goes flying somewhere behind him and Clarke faces him fully for the first time, startled. “You haven’t been there. You haven’t seen the aftermath of it- all that death left behind! You got to run away after all of it, and you’ve been here. And that’s fine, but you don’t know how things have been. How no one knows what to do anymore and it’s always chaos and looking over your shoulder because everyone thinks there is going to be another war any moment. The people at Mount Weather- our people, Princess- have begun stockpiling weapons and attacking Grounder hunting parties because they are afraid. We are going to jump from one war into another if we don’t stop! You want to attack? Go ahead, because then you’ll be the one killing us!”

Clarke is stunned, and not for the first time she realizes how selfish she was running away to Camp Jaha. Her mind begins to face and tingling starts up her arms and legs before she feels strong arms around her shoulders, guiding her and pulling her down. Wherever she is now, it’s soft and something warm is around her as Bellamy’s arm still holds her firmly. She finds her head in his shoulder, staring blankly at the far wall of her room.

“Calm down, c’mon now, Princess. No more yelling, okay? I didn’t mean to, it’s just been a long day,” Bellamy murmurs. Clarke realizes he’s using the same voice she heard him use on Olivia in Mount Weather’s medical facilities after the battle was over. When Clarke left, she had still been in a bad way, but Clarke didn’t have the nerve to face her before leaving. She knew too much, had lost too much, and Clarke couldn’t look her in the face. She couldn’t even ask Bellamy about her now, even though her breathing was slowly pacing itself out. She can feel her limbs growing heavier and knows that her fatigue is catching up with her.

“She killed him,” Clarke croaked. Bellamy stiffens, knowing exactly who she is talking about, and doesn’t respond. “She killed him, jus drein dus daun, she killed him and she killed them all…”

“I know, Princess,” Bellamy placates, unsure of what to say as Clarke winds herself tighter around his middle.

“She can’t be here, they’re dead, she can’t be here,” Clarke’s words are a bit slurred, but her eyes are still focused on the opposite wall.

“She wants to make sure that no one else dies- not her people, nor ours. That’s why she’s here. We need her here.” Bellamy thinks Clarke is asleep after she doesn’t respond and slips further so that she is lying across his lap. He is nearly asleep himself, leaning up against the hard metal wall the bed is pushed up against, when she finally responds.

“I killed them too…”

Bellamy doesn’t get to sleep for hours after that, watching the shoulders of the blonde rise and fall with ease they no longer possess while conscious. It’s only when he’s sure that she is in deep sleep by her faint snores that he allows himself to run his free hand through her hair and let his thoughts wander to what happened to his Princess who was stronger than them all.

When Clarke wakes up, she’s under warm blankets and comfortable weight is across her waist. She rolls over to find a mess of brown curls and smiles to herself, running a hand over Bellamy’s sleeping face. He looks innocent like this, like he could be happy, Clarke thinks. She presses a soft kiss to his lips, causing the older man to stir and blue eyes to fix sleepily on hers. Clarke almost smiles before she realizes that its sunlight that is framing his face, and there isn’t any sunlight this deep in the Mountain.

Then she scrambles back, remembering where she is and the weeks that have passed since they shared a bed in Mount Weather. She isn’t watching Bellamy anymore, which he is thankful for as he is pretty sure that he wasn’t able to hide his hurt fast enough. Rolling over, he pretends to go back to sleep, allowing Clarke enough of a grace period to get herself up and change from the sound of things. When she lightly shakes his shoulder a few minutes later, he hopes that he plays a good waking scene.

Even more, he hopes his disappointment is written across his face. He smiles back when Clarke offers him a small smile of her own with a mumbled good morning. She drops their gaze almost immediately, bustling about her small room asking him about breakfast or water, avoiding looking at him as he stretches and gets out of her bed. He ignores her small talk, stopping her as she reaches for a pot.

“I’m sorry I fell asleep, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says softly, hoping Clarke would meet his eyes.

“Upset? I’m not upset?” he voice is too high pitched for either of them to believe that. She sighs, putting down the pot. “Okay, I’m a little upset. I wanted you to tell me about the meeting last night, and you completely avoided it.” Bellamy’s eyebrows raise nearly to his hairline at this but he decides to allow her to play this out however she’d like.

“Alright, what did you want to know?”  
Clarke folds her arms, backing up from Bellamy a bit, still not meeting his eyes. 

“How did you let this happen?”

“What, you mean make an alliance? An alliance you first insisted upon? Or do you mean the part where we saved all of our people- both here and at Mount Weather. Because they would come back here, Princess. Hell, they’d probably come here first, seeing as they think we’re trespassing on their land and all.”

“No, I know,” Clarke growls out, folding her arms further into her stomach. “We needed this, but we needed this on our terms! That’s why I put you on the council, because I trusted you to get things done!”

“Put me? Put me on the council?” Bellamy’s anger shot up at this, all his frustration from the previous night reforming. “You didn’t put me on the council- I offered! I told them that I would represent the remaining 33 because you didn’t want to! You were supposed to be the one to do this, Princess, but you ran away from all of it and now I’m running between here and there every few days just to make sure that nothing falls apart without me! I come back and tell you what’s happening because you ask, not because I need your permission for how I act in my position, but because you asked. I told you once before, but I don’t take orders from you.”

“I’m not trying to give you orders, I’m just trying to help us!”

“No, you’re not. You gave that up, you chose to move here even though your departure left a gaping hole at Mount Weather. Thank god for Maya, because otherwise your mother wouldn’t be able to keep up with the hospital. And Octavia is good for talking to the Grounders when they let her in to the meetings, but at least Kane has some sort of sway with Lexa-“

“Don’t say her name,” Clarke warns, eyes finally snapping up to meet Bellamy’s. “Don’t you dare.” Bellamy takes a moment to cool down, noticing how the puffy jacket Clarke had scraped up swallows her up, making her look even smaller than usual. As much as he wants to just bullishly push ahead in this and get everything off of his chest, he swallows down his anger and pride.

“It’s done, there isn’t anything you can do about it. And don’t you try,” Bellamy warns. Clarke drops her eyes again, moving to pick up the pot she had intended to use earlier. Flipping it over, she scrutinized the chips and scorch marks that adorn the steel shell.

“What are the terms,” she eventually demands.

“They’re fairly simple- a Grounder representative on the Council and meetings that include the Commander every new moon. Some of those meetings will take place in Polis, every other one to be exact. Grounders can come and go as they please from the Mountain and our people are welcomed to visit local villages, but hospitality isn’t guaranteed, only civility. The Ark is to be made into medical facility this summer, that way its closer to the Grounder tribes so they don’t need to go all the way to Mount Weather if they need our help. We continue with the Reaper treatment, Mount Weather can store shared supplies for use during future winters, any unions between Grounders and our people need to be approved by both the Council and Commander, and I think that’s the most of it. We offered to teach them things we think of as basics- technology and such, but so far they don’t seem interested. Le- the Commander seemed pretty adamant about co-habilitation, said that we all need to stop seeing each other as ‘others’ and start seeing us as one.” Clarke nearly laughs at that, but instead just slams the pot back onto its hook.

“Until her people are in danger again,” Clarke mutters.

“It’s a good sentiment,” Bellamy sighs, not wanting to argue anymore. He is too tired, having not slept well against the hard wall. He finally gave in to lying them both down in Clarke’s bed, but that was after the first rays of sun began peeking in through the windows. Between his sleepless night, long trip from Mount Weather to Camp Jaha, and the stressful meeting the day before, he wasn’t looking forward to continuing this conversation any further. He hadn’t told Clarke about all the shouting and moments when he thought they were all going to kill each other in that small bunker room once and for all, but they were all taking a toll now.

“What about laws? The Charter can’t really work anymore, we need a new way of governing everyone.”

“It’s a bit...shaky, as of right now. The only concrete idea right now is that anyone who is involved in any violence against

“Well if there is one thing any of them can agree upon is blood must pay for blood. Just kill anyone who stands in the way of what you think is right.”

“Right now, the one who is standing in the way of everyone’s safety is you, Clarke!”

“You sound a lot like Jasper, back when the mountain men were fattening us up like pigs to the slaughter.”

“God damn it, Clarke,” Bellamy roars. “This is how it is. You lost your privilege of calling the shots the second you started to put yourself before everyone else!” Clarke is silent again, looking around as if for an escape.

“I bear it so no one else has to,” she finally scrapes out, meeting Bellamy’s eyes reluctantly. “If that makes me a bad person, fine. But don’t you think for one second I don’t care about what happens to all of our people. I thought you knew that- I’m helping everyone by being here, away from them. They can all go on and live because of my choices, and I won’t let you endanger that.”

“Like I said,” Bellamy says slowly, closing the distance between him and Clarke. “You don’t have a choice in this. The decision has been made. Now I have to go out there and talk to them and see when we leave. Your mother should be here soon, to survey the Ark and see what can be done to make this place into a medical center so we can hold up our end of the bargain. If you really want to help everyone, maybe you should think about going back with her. Teach the Grounders that stayed a thing or two about our medicine so they can help here as well.”

“I won’t teach them anything,” Clarke spits, turning her back on him. She hears Bellamy sigh and clattering behind her as he prepares to leave.

“Whatever you want, Princess,” Bellamy says, with a trace of defeat in his voice before ducking out of the room. 

No one bothers Clarke the entirety of the day, although she’s pretty sure that’s because she doesn’t leave the her room on the ship. She can hear them all mulling about out there and as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, she is unconsciously searching for that familiar voice that haunts her nightmares. 

While Clarke is happy to pretend that the noise outside her door is not the Grounders working on whatever Bellamy put together to keep them busy, the downside is that she hasn’t been able to eat. Though she keeps her pots and pans inside, her food source is the same communal one as the rest of the camp. She keeps telling herself that she can get Bellamy to get her some food when he returns, but its well past sunset and dinner before there is any sign of him returning. His arrival is announced by a hesitant knocking on the metal outside of her makeshift door. That seems to be as far as Bellamy’s manners extend as her barges in just moments later.

“I’m hungry,” Clarke says instead of a greeting. Bellamy seems taken aback by the blunt request, sizing her up before he replies.

“No one is stopping you from getting food, Princess,” he says, gesturing dramatically towards the door. Clarke just rolls her eyes, folding her arms around herself once more. Bellamy doesn’t like this new habit of hers almost as much as he doesn’t like what Clarke is becoming by her own isolation. “Did you forget where the food’s kept? Need me to escort you?”

“No, I’m fine,” Clarke says, sitting down on the edge of her bed. “How goes the alliance?”

“Well, I’d be concerned if it fell apart in a day,” Bellamy chuckles, taking a place next to Clarke. He is careful to place himself close, but just far enough away so that she doesn’t flinch. Whenever she flinches away, Bellamy feels his stomach give out, and after the day of high tension between Lexa’s Grounder troop and the remaining Arkers, he wasn’t sure he could handle it.

Clarke chooses to not only ignore his proximity but also his comment. Instead she prompts, “You said yesterday that they’ll be leaving to go back to their land soon- do you know when?”

“Yeah, we’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, before dawn, because they say the journey should take until sunset. A guard came from Mount Weather today and said your mother should be here tomorrow afternoon with the Council to start surveying. If you ask me, the decision to leave early was more based off missing them than making it home for dinner. We might be allies, but no one wants to listen to Jaha’s rambling anymore,” Bellamy laughs at the last part, moving backwards on the bed so that he can rest against the wall. Clarke almost smiles before her face takes a dramatic downturn and she turns on him.

“Wait, ‘we’?” Bellamy had a speech planned for when she put it all together. He had mentioned it last night, that Lexa wanted one of the Council to accompany her to Polis. He had laid the hints and hoped he wouldn’t have to say it outright so that he could just stick to his speech, but now Clarke was looking at him like that and he can feel the words dying on his tongue. 

He braces himself for more of Clarke’s yelling. She’d become good at that since she moved to the camp, and he had become good at picking up the pieces. This was a new Clarke, but still Clarke. Her good days made it all worth it, when she would smile at him or brush up against him. That night after the mountain fell had left him with many ideas of how things would turn out, and this was the farthest thing from any of his imagined situations, but he had promised to make the best of it. So he closed his eyes, picturing blue eyes shining with a lost sparkle and that rare smile while waiting for the tongue lashing.

Bellamy isn’t prepared for when a weight crashes into his middle, pushing him against the unforgiving steel of the wall. He opens his eyes to find a lap full of Clarke, her blonde hair buried into his shoulder. It takes a moment, but he grabs her tightly, pulling her into a more comfortable position, wondering what good karma he’d stored up for this.

“You can’t- you- you can’t! You can’t go!” Clarke gasps out.

“I have to, Princess,” Bellamy whispers into her hair, only half paying attention to her words and trying to memorize the curves of her body.

“Why you? Why are they sending you!” Clarke demands. She pulls back and Bellamy feels the terrible void her body has left against his.

“It has to be me.”

“But why!”

“Because they wanted you,” Bellamy admits, not meeting Clarke’s eyes. “They wanted you, and I fought. I fought for you, so you could stay. So they’re taking me instead.”

“She wanted...me?” Clarke asks breathlessly. She pulls away from Bellamy even farther, her mind a million miles away. When Bellamy reaches out to take her chin, her eyes have a hard time focusing.

“I’ll always fight for you, Princess.”

Just like that, the space Clarke created disappears and she is in his lap again. This time, her mouth is on his and she is winding her hands through his hair as if she doesn’t plan on letting go. He grabs her back just as forcefully, maneuvering them so that she is lying down under him on the bed.

Her hands somehow end up under his shirt and leave a trail of fire over his skin. Pulling away, he stares down at her in wonder. Somehow, every time they end up like this, it’s like the first time all over again. Bellamy almost can’t stand the distance between the two of them, diving back down to capture her lips. He never knows how long this Clarke will last. Half the time he thinks Clarke forgets about him when they aren’t in bed together. That or she just forgets about this part of him.

As he removes Clarke’s shirt, he opens his eyes to find tears streaming down her face. The heat that had just been his driving fire is quickly doused and a small part of him is frustrated for stopping. Squelching that voice, Bellamy rolls off of Clarke and cradles her face in his hands.

“What’s wrong?” he whispers, voice still huskey.

“They’ll kill you,” Clarke whispers between tears. “You killed… I killed… I killed so many. Jus drein dus daun, they’ll kill you.” Bellamy doesn’t try to argue, just gathers the blonde into his arms as she repeats the Grounder phrase. When she calms down, she lifts her head enough regard Bellamy seriously.

“Don’t leave. Please.”

“I’ll come back soon. I promise Princess. You won’t be alone for long,” Bellamy means the last part as a joke, but when he sees Clarke close off, he knows he said the wrong thing.

“We’re not alone.” Clarke slowly moves herself to the edge of the bed and Bellamy barely resists grabbing her back. Another thing he’s learned is to give Clarke space or be shut out completely. When he sees her reach for a metal figuring he didn’t even notice from its spot on the dirty floor, his desire to grab her back evaporates. Instead, he rolls over and recalls the night the spent together in Mount Weather when neither of them could be close enough to the other.

Clarke isn’t there when he is woken up by one of Lexa’s guards. She isn’t there when he packs the few things he has hastily away for his trip. She isn’t there when he takes one final look back at Camp Jaha. She isn’t there to quell his mind from racing and dwelling on the fact that this might be the last time he sees this place if the treaty doesn’t go well- even if it does go well they never negotiated how long exactly he had to stay in Polis. She isn’t there when Lexa’s horse slows down to stay in pace with his and she offers him this single piece of advice- love is weakness. She isn’t there when he drops that damned two-headed mutant in the dead leaves, hoping the Grounders will destroy it in their marching. She definitely isn’t there when he offers Lexa a smile. That single smile could destroy everything, but it began something instead.


End file.
